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44
peer-reviewed essay
Gendered
surveillance
and media usage
in post-Soviet
space
The case of Azerbaijan
by Ilkin Mehrabov
he global magnum opus of smear campaigning against
me by sending me pictures from the footage and told
journalists happened in Azerbaijan when the sex
me to behave or I would be defamed. And, well, I didn’t
video of the famous anti-corruption journalist Khadija
behave. I made it public on my own and said I was being
Ismayilova was released on the Internet. Ismayilova,
blackmailed.1
known for her critical investigative reporting, is a journalist asKhadija Ismayilova’s case is an illuminating example of how
sociated with the Azerbaijani service of Radio Free Europe/Radio
semi-authoritarian governments are engaging in disruptive
Liberty, where she frequently reports on the issues of misconmoves against disagreeable journalists and political opponents
duct, malfeasance, and unethical business dealings of governbased on the normative gender dynamics
ment officials and bureaucrats. As she herthat exist in various socio-cultural conself describes events in an interview given
This article is an attempt to explore the
texts. Within this scope, this article is an
to Ms. magazine, which she conducted
limits of gendered surveillance in Azerattempt to explore the limits of gendered
while in Los Angeles to receive the Courage
baijan – that is, how and to what extent
surveillance in Azerbaijan — that is, how
in Journalism Award from the International
female activists and women journalists are and to what extent female activists and
Women’s Media Foundation,
monitored and affected by the surveillative women journalists are monitored and
apparatuses of the state, both online and
affected by what I call the surveillative
the government planted a video
offline. The article also very briefly examapparatuses of the state, both online and
camera in my bedroom, and they
ines the gender dimension of Azerbaijani
offline. The article also tries, albeit very
filmed me when I was with my boypolitical activism and protest practices.
briefly, to investigate the gender dimension
friend. In Azerbaijan you are not
The questions of how gender stereotypes, of Azerbaijani political activism and protest
supposed to have a boyfriend, and
together with the more general problem of practices; and how the gender stereotypes,
you are not supposed to have sex if
the digital gender gap, are being used by
together with the more general problem
you are not married. Honor killings
the state authorities to control the public
of the digital gender gap, are being used
are still a huge problem in Azerbaiopinion are also addressed.
by the state authorities to control public
jan. I feel that was a calculation in
opinion. The conceptual framework of the
taping me in my bedroom. They
KEY WORDS: Gendered surveillance, surarticle is based upon two main sources of
did it in the hopes that someone in
veillative apparatuses, Khadija Ismayilova,
information: the netnographic narrativizamy family would arrange to kill me
Azerbaijan.
tion of Khadija Ismayilova’s case in conafter seeing it. So they blackmailed
abstract
45
photo: Youth Media Centre, Baku
peer-reviewed essay
Young protesters being
detained by police after an
unsanctioned protest in the
center of Baku, October 2012.
junction with an electronic correspondence conducted with her
on March 30, 2013; and quantitative analysis of Internet connectivity data in Azerbaijan, obtained from the Caucasus Research
Resource Centers’ Caucasus Barometer 2011 Azerbaijan survey.2
Gender and offline surveillative
apparatuses in Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan currently ranks 177 among the 196 studied countries
(Sweden and Norway head the list) in the Freedom of the Press
2013 report of the Freedom House;3 it ranks 156 among the 179
countries in the Reporters without Borders’ 2013 World Press
Freedom Index;4 and, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, is among the “top 10 worst jailers of journalists”5 in the
world. But what happened to Khadija Ismayilova was extremely
shocking even under the circumstances of a country where
people are accustomed to frequent mistreatment and jailing of
journalists. The blow was so low that, contrary to the blackmailers’ expectations — those who had demanded that she “abandon
her investigation of links between President Ilham Aliyev’s
family and lucrative building projects in Baku”6 — the journalist
was fully backed by the whole society, to the point that even the
“religious figures of the country [...] expressed their support”7
for her cause. According to Ismayilova, it was precisely because
this support came from the “mosque communities and other
conservatives”, who are otherwise “usually among her critics”,8 that her life was saved. As a result of the journalist’s keen
insistence in trying to uncover who was behind the attempt to
blackmail her with the sex video, events unfolded in a way such
that “Ismayilova did not hide. Instead, she tracked the letter to
a Moscow post office. She discovered curious wires inside her
apartment and then found the phone company worker hired to
install them”9 — and due to her investigations it was revealed that
the camera was set up in her bedroom in July 2011, almost eight
months before the blackmailing attempt took place. This incident caused a number of heated debates among the local and
global human rights and media advocacy groups, as
Ismayilova is not the first Azerbaijani journalist to fall
victim to such an attack. Other victims include editor-inchief of “Azadliq” newspaper Ganimat Zahid, finance director Azer Ahmadov and reporters Natig Gulahmadoglu and Gan Tural. Video clips containing intimate scenes
were posted on internet, in violation of the journalists’
privacy. This pattern indicates that the Azerbaijani government, illegally deploying the technical and human
resources of intelligence agencies, repeatedly organizes
centralized smear campaigns against journalists who
publish material critical of the government.10
All the people cited above, in a quotation taken from the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety’s declaration about the
case, are male journalists, with the exception of Khadija Ismayilova, who so far is the only woman publicist to be targeted with
such defamation and shaming campaign attempting to silence
her critical reporting. According to Ismayilova herself11 there are
no other accounts of female journalists or activists who were
46
peer-reviewed essay
ever targeted in such ways or imprisoned12 — except for the very
few examples of women protesters being taken into short-term
custody or put into jail for brief, token periods of time, like the
five-day prison term of Gozel Bayramova, deputy head of the
opposition Azerbaijani Popular Front Party. Yet, as the recent
consecutive arrests of first Leyla Yunus,13 head of the Institute of
Peace and Democracy, and human rights defender working on
the issues of political prisoners; and then Khadija Ismayilova14
herself, also clearly indicate, national law enforcement agencies, and hence surveillative apparatuses, are rapidly shifting
towards a more gender-neutral position. Now, when it comes to
the defamation of political opponents, smear campaigns against
disagreeable journalists, or the jailing of professionals with oppositional stances, there are no gender differences anymore,
and women are targeted in exactly the same way as their male
counterparts. The similar trait can be observed when skimming
through recent years’ Azerbaijani protest photos and videos as
well, which are filled with disturbing imagery of women activists being verbally and physically harassed, emotionally abused,
forcefully dragged away, or bloodily beaten by police officers,
military personnel, security guards, civil agents and other representatives of various law enforcement agencies. So, in the
real, offline world, women now started to be treated in the most
brutal ways, paralleling the treatment of male dissidents and
journalists — be it the close surveillance of their intimate lives or
the outright violence against them. Such transformation invites
a closer look at the situation of women activists in the online
realm.
First of all, despite all the secularization and modernization
processes Azerbaijan has undergone during the Soviet era, it is
still very much a traditionalist country, where most of the male
politicians and bureaucrats put constant emphasis on family
values and “women’s primary identities as mothers and wives”17
— despite the fact that Azerbaijan has one of the highest ratios of
female parliamentarians18 among post-Soviet countries. In this
Despite the numerous claims that most of the imprisoned Azersense it is very hard to disagree with Manijeh Sabi’s claim that
baijani male dissidents were closely monitored and detected
“Azerbaijan society remains as a fortress for patriarchy”; it is
also not very easy to explain an “inconsistency
between women’s economic participation in
the labor force and formal emancipation of
women on the one hand and their apparently
subservient and male-protected position on the
other”.19 Suzanne Rothman, a Fulbright English
Teaching Assistant based in Baku, observes that
the “gender attitudes, specifically the way men
interact with women in public, remain stuck
in an anachronistic rut” behind the “façade of
modernity” in Azerbaijan — with women constantly being “constrained by the preferences
of their male relatives” and thus mostly remaining “locked in tradition-bound roles as mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters”.20 Within
the socio-cultural context of such a dominant
patriarchy — where women are already heavily
monitored and patronized within the course
of everyday life through the normative gender
codes established by their fathers, brothers and
Khadija Ismayilova received the prestigious Courage in Journalism Award from the
husbands — very little state effort is required
International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) in a 2012 Los Angeles ceremony.
for the additional monitoring of women’s
Between modernism and traditionalism: Azerbaijani women online
Photo: Vince Bucci/IWMF
with pinpoint accuracy through their social media communications and usage — such as Jabbar Savalan, a 20-year-old student
member of an oppositional youth organization, being taken
into custody “after he posted on Facebook calling for a ‘Day of
Rage’ in Freedom Square in Baku, echoing the calls for protest
in the Middle East”15 — there is no known example of any female
activist being specifically targeted for her online presence and
activities. Based also on the thorough quantitative and qualitative analysis of 2003–2013 Azerbaijani offline and online protests
— the subject of another study seeking to build a categorical map
of protests in Azerbaijan, which is not reproduced here due to
the space constraints16 — it can be argued that the surveillative
apparatuses of Azerbaijan, aiming to monitor and keep under
control Internet users’ online media and social networking practices, are currently targeting male activists only, since there are
no clear indicators that the women protesters are kept under the
close online surveillance as well. It can be speculated with some
confidence that the national surveillative apparatuses are not
fully aimed at women yet; or, to be more precise, there is no persuasive evidence that the same measures — taken to prevent an
online call for action from turning into an actual offline protest,
as in the case of Jabbar Savalan — are being used against women
within the online world. Several phenomena could explain this.
peer-reviewed essay
Frequency of Internet use by respondent’s sex (%)
Male
9
9
3
9
58
7
4
Female
5 424
Every day
Less often
64
16
5
At least once a week
At least once a month
Never
I don’t know what the Internet is
DK/RA
Figure 1: The distribution of Internet use by gender in Azerbaijan.21
online behavior and conduct. And most of the time — due to
the country’s extremely low Internet penetration — such state
surveillance might not even be necessary, since, despite all the
claims of government officials for establishing widespread and
far-reaching Internet connectivity within Azerbaijan, analysis of
actual numbers reveals gloomy picture, especially in relation to
women’s Internet usage.
As the figure provided above clearly shows, only 15% of 711
women respondents of Caucasus Research Resource Centers’
Caucasus Barometer 2011 Azerbaijan survey use the Internet frequently, if at all, and an astonishing 80% either have never used
it or do not even know what the Internet is. By combining Facebook’s own Ads-selling program data with the World Bank’s demographical information, Katy E. Pearce, assistant professor at
the University of Washington, and one of the leading experts on
information-communication technologies usage in South Caucasus, provides a much more elaborated and detailed analysis of
Facebook usage,22 social media platform claimed to be carefully
watched by the national law enforcement and intelligence agencies in Azerbaijan. According to Dr. Pearce’s calculations, only
36% of Facebook users in Azerbaijan are women — whereas in
neighboring Armenia the gender balance of users is fairly even;
and in Georgia there are about 10% more women than men on
Facebook. In this sense, the low number of people and households having an Internet connection, combined with the much
lower percentage of women — compared with men — using the
Internet in everyday life, might explain the lack of evidence of
surveillance of online women activists.
Concluding remarks
Although the conditions of the Azerbaijani female activists depicted here might seem depressing — with women dissidents
being surveilled and intimidated in the offline world because of
their professional roles and oppositional positions, and the lack
of women in the online realm — not everything is so gloomy. The
case of Khadija Ismayilova being blackmailed with a sex video
proved the emergence of something extraordinarily different in
relation to the classic operational grounds of Azerbaijani online
and offline female activism. The attempt to silence a woman
47
journalist through a defamation campaign based on her private
life was widely discussed, especially in the Facebook forums of
religious women dissidents; and although many of these religious women did not approve of premarital sex at all, the plain
fact that this most intimate moment was recorded and distributed through the Internet, with the putative governmental involvement, elicited open criticism and harsh condemnation. Such an
expression of strong solidarity of religious women with Khadija
Ismayilova’s quest for justice might also explain — although
this is pure speculation — the surprising support the journalist
received from the religious communities in Azerbaijan. Circumstances like this point to an emerging possibility and potential
for the formation of alternative online platforms, leading to a
greater empowerment of women and gender equality through
merging various, otherwise separate, female activist movements
— especially given that so far there is no proof of online women
dissidents being surveilled. Despite the currently low number of
women connected to the Internet, there is a growing tendency
among Azerbaijani women’s organizations and female activists
to build websites, start discussion forums, and establish Facebook groups — indicators of a healthy growth of Internet portals
and milieus related to women’s issues, which might foster a
dialog and mutual understanding among women with different
backgrounds. ≈
Ilkin Mehrabov, Department of Geography, Media &
Communication Studies, Karlstad University, Sweden.
references
1 Anita Little, “Blackmail, Courage and the Truth: An Interview with
Khadija Ismayilova”, Ms., October 29, 2012. Accessed May 10, 2013, http://
msmagazine.com/blog/2012/10/29/blackmail-courage-and-the-truth-aninterview-with-khadija-ismayilova.
2 Caucasus Barometer is the annual household survey about social and
economic issues, as well as political attitudes, conducted by the Caucasus
Research Resource Centers (CRRC). CRRC’s Caucasus Barometer 2011
Azerbaijan survey was conducted nationwide between October 1, 2011,
and November 2, 2011, and in total 1481 adults of at least 18 years of age
(of which 48% were women) were interviewed face-to-face using the
Azerbaijani language.
3 The report states that the situation in Azerbaijan worsened compared
with previous years, mainly “due to an increase in violence against
journalists and legal amendments that limited access to information”.
FH, Freedom of the Press 2013: Middle East Volatility amid Global Decline
(Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2013), 8.
4 Reporters without Borders report states that the current situation in
Azerbaijan indicates that the “noose tightened around what remained
of the opposition media”. RsF, World Press Freedom Index 2013 (Paris:
Reporters without Borders, 2013), 14.
5 Elana Beiser, “Second Worst Year on Record for Jailed Journalists”,
Committee to Protect Journalists, December 18, 2013. Accessed January 10,
2014, http://www.cpj.org/reports/2013/12/second-worst-year-on-recordfor-jailed-journalists.php.
6 Amanda Erickson, “Sending Out an SOS: A New Low in Azerbaijan”,
Columbia Journalism Review 51, no. 2 (2012): 12.
7 RFE/RL, “RFE/RL Journalist Says She Won’t Be Intimidated by Blackmail
48
peer-reviewed essay
Campaign”, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, March 14, 2012. Accessed
May 10, 2013, http://www.rferl.org/content/azerbaiijani_journalist_defiant_
over_blackmail/24515283.html
8 Ben Brumfield, “Salacious Video Defames Journalist Critical of Azerbaijani
Government”, CNN, March 20, 2012. Accessed May 10, 2013, http://edition.
cnn.com/2012/03/19/world/asia/azerbaijan-video-defamation/index.html
9 Amanda Erickson, “Khadija Ismayilova”, The Atlantic 310, no. 4 (2012): 51.
10 IRFS/IFEX, “Anti-Corruption Journalist Receives Threats, Explicit
Images”, The Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety/International
Freedom of Expression Exchange, March 8, 2012. Accessed May 10, 2013,
http://www.ifex.org/azerbaijan/2012/03/08/ismayilova_threatened
11 Khadija Ismayilova, personal communication with author, March 30, 2013.
12 According to the updated list of political prisoners, released by the Bakubased Human Rights Club on October 1, 2013, there are two females
in Azerbaijani jails among the 142 persons imprisoned for politically
motivated reasons. Within the published list both of them are placed
under the rubric of Other Cases, with very brief information being
provided: “Beylerqizi Shamsiyya – member of the Union of Azerbaijani
Journalists and Writers”; and “Safaraliyeva, Shafaq – resident who
complained about the Zerdab District Executive Authority head Lutfali
Babayev.” When a more thorough Internet search with these names is
conducted no other information, but the list itself, can be found online.
Although this might be related with the differences in pronunciations
of names in their original vernacular forms and English neither of
women were mentioned by Khadija Ismayilova during the personal
communication as well. Human Rights Club, “Azerbaijan: An Updated
List of Political Prisoners”, The Civic Solidarity Platform, October 1, 2013.
Accessed May 4, 2014, http://civicsolidarity.org/article/800/azerbaijanupdated-list-political-prisoners.
13 Daisy Sindelar, “Together A Lifetime, Azeri Activists Now Apart And In
Jail”, RFE/RL, August 26, 2014. Accessed November 6, 2014, http://www.
rferl.org/content/azerbaijan-yunus-couple-apart-in-jail/26551508.html.
14 HRW, “Azerbaijan: Investigative Journalist Arrested”, Human Rights
Watch, December 5, 2014. Accessed December 6, 2014, http://www.hrw.
org/news/2014/12/05/azerbaijan-investigative-journalist-arrested.
15 AI, Amnesty International Public Statement: Azerbaijani Youth Activists
Targeted after Using Facebook to Call for Protests (London: Amnesty
International, 2011), 1.
16 Ilkin Mehrabov, “Surveillance, Gender and Social Media: New Politics
of Opposition in Azerbaijan” (paper presented at the 9th International
Conference Crossroads in Cultural Studies, Paris, France, July 2–6, 2012).
17 Niloofar Osuli, “Feminism in Republic of Azerbaijan in Globalized World”,
Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research 9, no. 1 (2011): 44–50.
18 According to the World Bank statistics on the proportion of seats held by
women in the national parliaments, 16% of Azerbaijani Milli Majlis are
women. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SG.GEN.PARL.ZS
19 Manijeh Sabi, “The Impact of Economic and Political Transformation on
Women: The Case of Azerbaijan”, Central Asian Survey 18, no. 1 (1999):
111–120.
20 Suzanne Rothman, “Azerbaijan: When Will the Catcalls Stop?”,
EurasiaNet.org, January 10, 2014. Accessed March 2, 2014, http://www.
eurasianet.org/node/67929
21 The graphic is derived from the Caucasus Research Resource Centers’
Caucasus Barometer 2011 Azerbaijan survey’s dataset, available at the
http://www.crrc.ge/oda/?dataset=17&row=157&column=2&print=true
22 Katy E. Pearce, “Facebook in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia — 2013
— With a Gender Focus”, Katy Pearce Blog, January 13, 2014. Accessed
February 2, 2014, http://www.katypearce.net/facebook-in-armeniaazerbaijan-and-georgia-2013-with-a-gender-focus
V. Lebedev, “Good Hands”, Sovetskoe Foto 6 (1964).